Pat Buchanan has written about the demise of the European-American peoples beneath the trampling of northward trekking, Third World immigrants.

"America is disintegrating. The centrifugal forces pulling us apart are growing inexorably. What unites us is dissolving. And this is true of Western Civilization....Meanwhile, the state is failing in its most fundamental duties. It is no longer able to defend our borders, balance our budgets, or win our wars."

Noman doesn't disagree with the overall concern expressed in the assessment, though he's more hopeful than the author about America's righting its course, sooner rather than later. But, he doesn't blame the problem on invading hordes from the south, frijole wolfing Telmarines.

Neither is he sure that the forces tearing the West apart are centrifugal rather than totalistic drawing us to the center of one world tyranny rooted in redistributionist, command and control--in brief, anti-freedom, anti-personal--ideologies.

Specifically, Buchanan excoriates the acceptance of a permanent underclass. Noman thinks it's even worse than he suggests. The President and his Party's game plan seems to be to permanently expand this base and milk it for votes into perpetuity.

He highlights the lethal role of dechristianization in the process of decay. It's hard to look at TV or movies and argue with him. This is not the fault of immigrants, however. To Noman's mind, moreover, Buchanan is altogether too dour about Catholicism's prospects.

Half a century on, the disaster is manifest. The robust and confident Church of 1958 no longer exists. Catholic colleges and universities remain Catholic in name only. Parochial schools and high schools are closing as rapidly as they opened in the 1950s. The numbers of nuns, priests and seminarians have fallen dramatically. Mass attendance is a third of what it was. From the former Speaker of the House to the Vice President, Catholic politicians openly support abortion on demand.

Even the collusion of atheistic communism, Russian Orthodoxy, anti-Polish bigotry and historical antipathy could not extirpate Roman Catholicism from the Soviet Union. Conditions are much more hospitable in the US despite Catholic baiting, self-hating Catholics, radical secularism and hangover prejudices from European history.

The Church's situation is much more optimistic than Buchanan sees, perhaps because he's always looking wistfully at the past rather than hopefully at the future. For instance, alternative schools are arising to fill the needs of religious parents and children. There are four such choices in Ann Arbor alone.

Many, not all, seminaries and parishes are filling with John Paul II vocations. The Church emerged from the great post-Vatican II dessert with firmer direction, better catechetical tools, and a more social doctrine than it entered. It has benefitted from a treasure trove of Papal teaching necessitated precisely by the gauntlet the church has been forced to run.

Forms have changed. But, Jesus lives in the Church as does the Spirit; the Father keeps watch and hears us. Fear not. Set out into the deep.

Elsewhere, Buchanan writes that "white America is an endangered species" and that Mexico is moving north." Noman takes his point about the freedom, prosperity and toleration that this mostly caucasion, Judeo-Christian nation has given birth to in the world. But, he is not so concerned about the Hispanization of American culture.

As Rick Santorum rightly pointed out in last night's Republican Presidential debate, Hispanics are largely faith-filled, pious, family-loving people. He did not mention that they are also mother/woman-venerating, but could have.

They are also largely Catholic, even when in opposition to the Church. The Spanish joke goes that the evangelical missionary was told by the atheistic object of his proselytizing, "Look, if I don't believe in the Catholic Church, which is the one true Church, why should I believe in what you say?"

America could stand to learn some things from our neighbors to the South, and doesn't need to lament their cultural influence.

Naturally, Hispanics like all immigrants need to be assimilated to America's ways, ideals and beliefs. Failure to do so is less the fault of Hispanic immigrants, like Noman's parents, who come to America with stars and stripes in their eyes and hopes for a better life in their hearts, than of the multi-culti frauds that refuse to do their duty. One need not assail immigration in order to fix a government-caused problem.

The following left Noman scratching his head, at least with respect to the American context.

Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.

Does Buchanan not know that Spanish is a European culture, language and heritage? Or, did he just slip up?

Frankly, it has always troubled Noman, who is generally a fellow traveler, that Buchanan means something racial--white, Anglo-Irish, Germanic--when he references things American. It does not help to identify it as European, or western, and to speak of the "non-Europeanization of America."

Noman is not Irish-Catholic, and doesn't want to be except on St. Patrick's day. Notre Dame is neither his ideal of intellectual culture, nor his alma mater. He is, however, Catholic, American, and Hispanic. There's room for all of us in this country, and Church.

Buchanan writes that "where equality is enthroned, freedom is extinguished. The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society." He's mixing two things here.

Equality and freedom are not diametrically opposed. Freedom is an equally shared property of the human soul. And social equality is a condition of the free society.

The problem is one of definition--equality of opportunity, or of result? if the egalitarian society means the latter, which Noman will grant ad arguendo, then it's problematic, and dangerous to liberty. But, one need not discredit an ontologically undeniable and socially necessary principle to correct erroneous interpretations.

"The family is the incubator of inequality and God its author." Amen. But, God is also the creator before whom we all stand equal. He is not a respecter of persons.

That is the root of an equality more radical than any distortion that multi-culturalists can conjure. Buchanan is capable of more precision, which Noman hopes the book supplies.

Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.

Noman thinks he's wrong on this count. Rather, future generations, historians included, will look back and bless the nation's adherence to first principles in troubled times.

The magnificent republic we inherited--and should defend tooth-and-nail in all its magnificence, regardless of its blemishes--was bequeathed to us, inter alia, by the scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.

George Washington wasn't descended from Third-World roots. But, Steve Jobs was. Leonard Lauder, Estee's son, writes in today's WSJ that immigrants and their children founded half of Fortune 500 firms like Google and Intel.

"There is no doubt that immigrant entrepreneurs and their children have fueled our economy. My mother is a prime example. Josephine Esther Mentzer was a daughter of Hungarian and Czech immigrants. Estée, as she was called by her family, was always interested in beauty and cosmetics and started selling skin care products to beauty salons more than 65 years ago. Her creativity and hard work are today embodied in a successful global corporation that provides jobs for thousands of people in the U.S. alone."

"Our story is hardly unique. A new report from the Partnership for a New American Economy has found that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies generate more than $4 trillion in annual revenuemore than the gross domestic product of every country with the exception of the U.S., China and Japan."

"One need not go back far to see how important opening our borders is to tomorrow's American businesses. Companies in the Fortune 500 founded since 1985 were more likely to have been started by immigrants than those founded before 1985. Think of such names as Google, Intel, eBay and Yahoo!, among other newly minted iconic companies, and then remember that they were started by first-generation Americans."

"In fact, more than a quarter of the high-tech and engineering businesses launched here between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder. In Silicon Valley alone, the percentage of immigrant start-up companies is more than 50%, according to a report out of Duke and the University of California, Berkeley."

[end quote]

The broad brush with which Buchanan tars immigration simply doesn't do justice to the phenomenon.

He writes about the triumph of tribalism:

"We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse."

OK. But, America is not one of those countries naturally vexed with ethnonationalism. Quite the contrary. We are not bound by ties of ethnicity, blood, land, history or culture--which in America is decidedly a small-"c" affair. In the countries he is referring to, Culture is King, and Capitalized. Here, we are bound by ideas and fidelity to ideals.

As for America's ability to engage the heart, Noman weeps with piety at the singing of the Star Spangled Banner or waving of our flag. He wept with love for America on September 11th, as he does annually. One need not be Hispanic or Mediterranean to feel these sentiments.

This is not to deny the facts that our free society is always susceptible to invasion by ideas and movements foreign to our ways, and to various deconstructionists who utilize the benefits that America so lavishly affords them in order to destroy it, or so alter it as to make it unrecognizable.

Through its support of mass immigration, its paralysis in power to prevent 12-20 million illegal aliens from entering and staying, its failure to address the anchor-baby issue, the Republican Party has birthed a new electorate that will send it the way of the Whigs.

Mass immigration is separate and distinct from illegal immigration. Noman wonders if illegal immigration would be such a problem if legal immigration were sufficiently "mass."

But, again, it is his equation of the Republican Party with the "White Party" that gives Noman the heebe-jebees and strikes him as being singularly unsavory, not to mention unhelpful. Where doe's Herman Cain fit in Buchanan's constellation? Marco Rubio? Bobby Jindal?

With respect to borders, he writes:

Are vital U.S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 -- or by what is happening on our border with Mexico?...What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?

The question of where our troops might be better deployed is one on which reasonable minds can differ. Noman appreciates that it is a question in play in the Republican Presidential debates due to the presence of Ron Paul. But, outlandish talk about losing Arizona doesn't help the discussion progress. It retards it because it disgusts even people concerned for border integrity.

We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited -- the best and greatest country on earth.

Noman agrees--with undoubted nationalistic pride and a touch of ignorant hubris--that America is the best and greatest country on the earth, in fact in the history of humanity. That's what his immigrant elders always preached. Eleven years of living abroad only convinced him that they were right. He subscribes to American exceptionalism.

He is willing to join Buchanan's protest against the multi-cluturalists, anti-capitalists, Christo-phobic secularists, and assorted grievance mongers whose strenuous exertions especially in law and culture have served to usher in the travesties clawing at the nation's vitality.

He is not inclined to share Buchanan's espoused sentiments, however.

Noman is willing to assume that the excerpts selected in Drudge's synopsis so shear the flagrant money quotes from reasoned argument as to make them only seem the rantings of a disgruntled, xenophobic nativist. For the sake of conservatism and the Catholicism that Buchanan so evidently considers core to his being, Noman hopes that is the case.

He fears, however, that Buchanan's obsession with, and virulence towards, southerners and Third-Worlders is of the type that says little about his objects of reproach, and far too much about the interior deformities of those who project bogeyman fantasies onto to dark-skinned people.

Noman prays that he is mistaken, and for Buchanan and those he sways in case he is not.

Our national demise is assured the futher we remove ourselves from the teachings of Christ. You want separation to mean no public acknowledgment of what Jesus did for all mankind? Fine. Try and keep your nation intact. Our forefathers knew what was the glue holding us together.

And that glue has been replaced by postmodern philosophy.

4
posted on 10/19/2011 6:41:14 PM PDT
by Salvavida
(The restoration of the U.S.A. starts with filling the pews at every Bible-believing church.)

We tend to forget, or have never considered, that other world views existed then, as now.

Unless today's citizens rediscover the ideas of liberty existing in what Jefferson called "the American mind" of 1776, we risk going back to the "Old World" ideas which preceded the "Miracle of America."

There are those who call themselves "progressives," when, in fact, their ideas are regressive and enslaving, and as old as the history of civilization.

Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read on line.

This 600+-page history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.

Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.

In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.

The 1872 history by Frothingham is simply amazing in its examination of the ideas which provided the foundation for our Declaration of Independence's assertion of individual, unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and their Source.

That this history is now available for reading online means that every American with a computer can read an authentic history which was not tainted by the "progressive" mindset of the past century.

I heard him interviewed and he said that there is no common bond left that unites Americans, today. After 9/11 we were united fro a couple of days ...but, no we are just a bunch of isolated and insulated tribes.

Its a great atmosphere for politicians. But, not for society.

11
posted on 10/19/2011 8:44:14 PM PDT
by Baynative
(The penalty for not participating in politics is you will be governed by your inferiors.)

Would suggest to any who wish an authentic history of the ideas underlying American's founding a visit to this web site, at which Richard Frothingham's outstanding 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States" can be read on line.

This 600+-page history traces the ideas which gave birth to the American founding. Throughout, Richard Frothingham, the historian, develops the idea that it is "the Christian idea of man" which allowed the philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to become a reality--an idea which recognizes the individual and the Source of his/her "Creator"-endowed life, liberty and law.

Is there any wonder that the enemies of freedom, the so-called "progressives," do not promote such authentic histories of America? Their philosophy puts something called "the state," or "global interests" as being superior to individuals and requires a political elitist group to decide what role individuals are to play.

In other words, they must turn the Founders' ideas upside-down in order to achieve a common mediocrity for individuals and power for themselves.

Thanks much for the link! The Kindle version is an OCR mess, but that's okay, they've got the PDFs which are fine.

12
posted on 10/19/2011 9:03:37 PM PDT
by Ezekiel
(The Obama-nation began with the Inauguration of Desolation.)

I’ll grant that we’re under siege by the Statist Left, which is running DC, the media, the universities, and large sectors of Big Capitalism.

But, Pat is too defeatist. Where is the Reagan in him? There’s more uniting us than separating us.

Look how hard President Olinsky and VP Biden have to work, how outlandish they have to get, in order to budge things in their direction. And, they can’t, even after unleashing the loonies all around the country.

They are losing, not winning, the war of ideas. After three years of selling their ideas and programs to the American people, who believes the President when he speaks about what kind of people we are? Who believes in his programs other than the anti-capitalist, Statist bozos that will always be among us?

Pat’s tone is completely wrong, even if his diagnosis is rooted in evident phenomena. He’s like the last bull who has surrendered in a bear market just before the market explodes.

I wish he’d take some Metamucil and lighten up. I was (obviously) disappointed by what I read on Drudge. And his interview is apparently more of the same.

“Noman doesn’t disagree with the overall concern expressed in the assessment, though he’s more hopeful than the author about America’s righting its course, sooner rather than later.”

Is California righting its course? What about Massachusetts? What about Vermont? Congress has an 8 percent approval rating and less than 30 percent of Americans believe the federal government has the “consent of the governed.”

“But, he doesn’t blame the problem on invading hordes from the south, frijole wolfing Telmarines.”

Buchanan’s thesis is actually that mass immigration is only a symptom of cultural collapse - this is a straw man.

“He highlights the lethal role of dechristianization in the process of decay. It’s hard to look at TV or movies and argue with him. This is not the fault of immigrants, however.”

This is false.

Everyone knows who created Hollywood and who rules Hollywood to this day.

“Even the collusion of atheistic communism, Russian Orthodoxy, anti-Polish bigotry and historical antipathy could not extirpate Roman Catholicism from the Soviet Union.”

The “soft tyranny” of America’s decadent pop culture is much worse and more enervating than the “hard tyranny” of communist authoritarianism - just look at Western Europe, which is dying a happy death in the embrace of multiculturalism and socialism.

“But, he is not so concerned about the Hispanization of American culture.”

Have you been to California or South Texas? Nothing to be concerned about? What happens when Texas, Georgia, and Florida become Democratic states?

“As Rick Santorum rightly pointed out in last night’s Republican Presidential debate, Hispanics are largely faith-filled, pious, family-loving people. He did not mention that they are also mother/woman-venerating, but could have.”

They also vote 6 to 4 for the Democrats ... which means that mass immigration pushes America to the Left, which empowers Democrats. Just look at California which was destroyed by the IRCA amnesty and the Immigration Act of 1965.

“They are also largely Catholic, even when in opposition to the Church.”

“America could stand to learn some things from our neighbors to the South, and doesn’t need to lament their cultural influence.”

Yes, we need to become more like Brazil, and less like the America of the 1950s!

“Naturally, Hispanics like all immigrants need to be assimilated to America’s ways, ideals and beliefs. “

Is that really happening? Go ask Luis Gutierrez and the National Council of La Raza and MALDEF.

“One need not assail immigration in order to fix a government-caused problem.”

Is California better than it was fifty years ago?

“Does Buchanan not know that Spanish is a European culture, language and heritage? Or, did he just slip up?

Mexico is not a Western country. Spain and Portugal are Western countries, but Guatemala and Brazil are most certainly not Western countries.

“Frankly, it has always troubled Noman, who is generally a fellow traveler, that Buchanan means something racial—white, Anglo-Irish, Germanic—when he references things American. It does not help to identify it as European, or western, and to speak of the “non-Europeanization of America.”

That never troubled the Founders - America has racialized immigration laws from the 1790s until the 1960s. That’s why America was almost 90 percent White in the 1960s. That happened by design.

“He is, however, Catholic, American, and Hispanic. There’s room for all of us in this country, and Church.”

If that were the case, then there wouldn’t be a problem. No one would have any complaints about Hispanics. Unfortunately, only a liar would sit here and say that Hispanics haven’t transformed South Florida, South Texas, Southern Arizona, and Mexifornia.

“He’s mixing two things here.”

Militant egalitarians have been trying to overthrow liberty in the name of equality for generations. The Soviets? Mao? North Korea? Castro?

“And social equality is a condition of the free society.”

No, it is not.

Thomas Jefferson explicitly condemned the whole concept of “social equality” which was always contrasted with civic equality and political equality until the 20C.

Feminism is not a condition of a free society. Neither is radical multiculturalism or other such nonsense.

“Noman thinks he’s wrong on this count. Rather, future generations, historians included, will look back and bless the nation’s adherence to first principles in troubled times.”

“The magnificent republic we inherited—and should defend tooth-and-nail in all its magnificence, regardless of its blemishes—was bequeathed to us, inter alia, by the scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.”

No, it wasn’t.

America was created by British Protestants and a smaller number of Northern European groups.

That plaque was privately installed on the Statue of Liberty. For decades, the Statue of Liberty faced Europe ... and was regarded as a symbol of American purity and republicanism, not as a beacon for immigrants.

Liberals historians in the 1940s and 1950s invented the myth that the Statute of Liberty was associated with immigration.

In the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress excluded the refuse by law. In several reforms prior to the Immigration Act of 1924, Congress has banned anarchists and retards and had went to great lengths to exclude the “wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

So what? Our ancestors built this country. A bunch of foreigners created an algorithm. It was also the nativist William Shockley who created the semiconductor.

“The broad brush with which Buchanan tars immigration simply doesn’t do justice to the phenomenon.”

The facts are that Third World immigration is enormous drain on American taxpayers - there are few exceptions (i.e., the Cubans, East Asian brainiacs, etc), but it is a lie to say that illegal aliens are becoming rocket scientists and splitting the atom and doing stuff of that nature.

“OK. But, America is not one of those countries naturally vexed with ethnonationalism.”

Except for the War Between the States, right?

“Quite the contrary. We are not bound by ties of ethnicity, blood, land, history or culture—which in America is decidedly a small-”c” affair.”

That wasn’t the case prior to the 1950s and 1960s. Before the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that America was Western Christian nation, as Buchanan explains.

“In the countries he is referring to, Culture is King, and Capitalized. Here, we are bound by ideas and fidelity to ideals.”

Well, if that is true, what passes for American culture is shit these days, and no one who is sane would want to identify with that culture.

“One need not be Hispanic or Mediterranean to feel these sentiments.”

If Mexicans love America so much, why do they cheer for Mexico against America during the World Cup? Does Luis Gutierrez love America? What about the National Council of La Raza?

“Mass immigration is separate and distinct from illegal immigration.”

Not really.

Mass immigration is driven through chain migration and bullshit “family reunification laws” that allows Mexico and other foreign countries to export their poorest citizens here to become Democratic voters.

“Noman wonders if illegal immigration would be such a problem if legal immigration were sufficiently “mass.”

We don’t need “legal immigration” either when the economy has collapsed to near depression conditions.

“But, again, it is his equation of the Republican Party with the “White Party” that gives Noman the heebe-jebees and strikes him as being singularly unsavory, not to mention unhelpful. Where doe’s Herman Cain fit in Buchanan’s constellation? Marco Rubio? Bobby Jindal?”

White people are responsible for 90 percent of votes for the Republican Party. If White people become a minority, the Republican Party goes extinct.

This is not to say that non-Whites do not support the Republican Party. But let’s be honest. The vast majority of blacks are going to vote for Obama against Herman Cain. Just as the vast majority of Hispanics would vote against Marco Rubio.

That is reality. Mathematics.

If the Democratic Party explicitly caters to homosexuals, to feminists, to Hispanics, to African-Americans, to Asians, and to Jews, and to every other demographic group, then the Republican Party should at least acknowledge that White people and especially White Christian Southerners are the base of the GOP, and that without White Christian Southerners people, there isn’t going to be a GOP in the future, which can already be seen in California.

“But, outlandish talk about losing Arizona doesn’t help the discussion progress. It retards it because it disgusts even people concerned for border integrity.”

Did you know that the radical Mecha activist and the leader of the House Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva represents Southwestern Arizona?

Why is the idea outlandish? Have you been watching Luis Gutierrez?

“He subscribes to American exceptionalism.”

American exceptionalism is a retarded idea - that’s exactly likely thinking you bulletproof when you are drink. In our cause, America is drunk on utopian ideology, and we think that we are bulletproof.

Future generations will live with the curse of this insanity. Actually, we are already feeling the earliest waves of the inevitable economic collapse right now.

“Noman is willing to assume that the excerpts selected in Drudge’s synopsis so shear the flagrant money quotes from reasoned argument as to make them only seem the rantings of a disgruntled, xenophobic nativist.”

The “disgruntled, xenophobic nativists” ... oh yeah, you mean the people who were right about California? The people who warned that immigration would destroy California and make it impossible for conservatives to live there.

Wile there are issues that unite conservatives and baby boomers, I don't see the same for the nation. While Pat may sound defeatist in his warning, I have to admit that his dismal view of our society being Balkanized seems more correct than not.

15
posted on 10/20/2011 7:05:05 AM PDT
by Baynative
(The penalty for not participating in politics is you will be governed by your inferiors.)

First of all, thank you for taking the time to respond so thoroughly, and for reading.

If I can respond in toto and only partially piecemeal, I’d say that we see lots of the same problems, e.g., Hispanics vote Democrat, Socialism kills, ethnic Balkanization ill serves America, misplaced loyalties among citizens, the economic and cultural collapse of various states, communities, etc..

I think the proper response is to change the reality rather than decry it. E.g., Hispanics don’t have to vote Democrat. We don’t have to follow Socialist policies. Ethnic enclaves can serve to contextualize the person, and not just alienate him against the nation. We don’t have to put up with Anti-American ranting from various corners of the social universe. We don’t have to save California’s bacon, or Massachusetts’.

What is our plan? I have my candidates. You have yours. Noman is trying to write what he thinks. So is Sick of Lefties. Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t think Pat’s ideas are particularly helpful to the causes of liberty, morality, Christianity or conservatism.

Re, mass immigration:

I don’t agree that mass immigration is necessarily a symptom of cultural collapse. I see that it can be, as it is in France and Western Europe generally. But, America has had many mass migrations in the 19th and 20th centuries, including during WWII, that have helped make America stronger, not weaker.

Re, aversion to Hispanics and non-whites:

“Buchanans thesis is actually that mass immigration is only a symptom of cultural collapse - this is a straw man.”

Buchanan is explicit about his distaste for immigrants from the south. He/you can defend his predilection, but you cannot fairly deny it.

Re, Hollywood and the Jews:

“Everyone knows who created Hollywood and who rules Hollywood to this day.”

As for Hollywood and the Jews, which is who I assume you’re referring too, I hadn’t thought to lump Jews in with our modern immigration disputes. They’ve been here for centuries, and I would think have earned authentic American status by now.

I don’t generally like media, and acknowledge that the people running it misuse their power to the country’s detriment. I don’t see the benefit, however, of laying the guilt on an ethnic group rather than on wrong-headed people.

Jews have their reasons for being liberal, many of which are rightly intentioned (e.g., desire for justice and to alleviate suffering) even if wrong-headed in execution and design. The challenge is to show wrong-headed people how off-base and wasteful their policies are, how disastrous the consequences of their political commitments are. That’s where my energies will go.

Re, my posture towards other cultures, especially Hispanics:

America can and should learn from others because, as good as we are, we don’t know everything. And, as Pat and you point out, we seem to have forgotten much of what we knew.

That’s not to say that others are pure and that we are not. Quite the contrary, which I imagine that most immigrants would tell you. Their presence here indicates their preference.

Hispanics, specifically, are not to be feared by conservatives. There is more in their culture amenable to conservatives than to liberals. They are to be won over.

That doesn’t mean capitulation to amnesty, open borders, anchor babies, etc. Those are leftist issues, and conservatives who champion them have bought into a Leftis narrative on Leftist terms. It means dispassionate reasoning about why it’s important to follow legal means, careful inculcation into the American way, instruction as to the importance of character to liberty, firmness about where the lines are and what is expected of people coming into the country, etc. We used to do that. We can again.

I make no brief for La Raza, Mecha, or MALDEF. This is the wing of Hispanics that will always be sin verguenza (shameless). Neither do I make a brief for ACORN, feminists, multi-culturalists, SEIU, or any group on the left for the same reasons. That a group is Hispanic as well as Leftist adds nothing to the analysis. They are wrong and must be fought, at the level of ideas and policies, not at the level of personal attributes.

Re, which countries are Western:

Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil, along with every other nation of Latin America is Western, Christian and rooted in European civilization. You’re giving up too easily on territory that shares a broad cultural heritage with the US because Marxist westerners have too deeply penetrated the soil. Those Western Leftists have also penetrated our Universities, government and professions, which doesn’t make them non-Western institutions.

Re, who belongs:

My belief is that there is room for everyone in this country. Moreover, the American heart is one that must make room for everyone including the weak, impoverished and seemingly valueless: in a word, the losers. It’s good for the American heart, which is good for America.

That is not to say that we must resign ourselves to people being a drag on everybody, or that we’re obligated to give them all sorts of stuff. Quite the contrary, the right to be here must be predicated on a person’s willingness to give, contribute, try, produce, learn, hustle.

I think that the passion this issue generates is rooted in the fact that we’ve perverted the American compact, and people resent immigrants gaming the corrupt system that’s been put in place. My opinion is that we should dump the corrupt system, and keep the immigrants coming in.

In my opinion, focusing on their color or language adds nothing, and detracts much.

People produce wealth, not poverty. Only Nancy Pelosi and her ilk believe that people are necessarily a drag on society and its resources. That’s because her political economy is collectivist, Statist, dependency-focused. That’s the problem, not the people.

Re, equality:

Social equality—everyone must be free to succeed, or fail—is a condition of the free society. We know that now, whether we did in the 18th century or not. We did then too, but the strata of people who belonged was more circumscribed.

The question of who must be included in the social compact antedates the founders by a couple of millennia, at least. My contention: there is nobody in a politically liberal, economically free and culturally-morally diverse society such as America that should be excluded in principle.

Nobody should be fated to dependence by the political economy. Happily, democratic capitalism doesn’t do that to people. Statism does.

Some will fail. That’s life. They must be picked up by intermediate associations—family, church, friends, communities, the ethnic group, etc.—not the State.

Re, American exceptionalism:

American exceptionalism is a belief that in this country, we got things basically right. We’ll self-adjust as needed as long as we are moral. We are a can-do people. And, we are blessed by God.

I wouldn’t give up faith in this idea so easily. It’s not healthy for America.

Collapse is not inevitable. As Arthur Laffer wrote in 2008, it is a choice. I choose not to be defeatist.

I also choose not to scapegoat immigrants, or lump people into deterministic categories. That’s what the Left does. But, they’re blind. Conservatives are not.

My advice:

Look to the good. Set out into the deep. Be not afraid.

Re, racialized immigration policy:

Finally, is there anything you’d recommend that touches on this being necessarily a White nation, or one set against allowing inferiors to come into it; one of Pat’s books for instance?

I’m very uncomfortable with these ideas, as well as think that they’re impediments to peace along conservative lines. If you think my beliefs are the result of indoctrination contrary to the authentic American spirit, I’d like to read the most reasonable exposition of that argument.

FYI, I’m not willing to give up on the Judeo-Christian roots of the American experiment in ordered liberty along the lines of a modern political economy, and think that if that’s what you mean by white, then everyone in the country and everyone coming into it should be trained to think white.

But, you don’t have to be white-skinned to be so trained, or to embrace those beliefs. Neither does one need to point at ethnicity as the cause of our not doing so. Again, that’s what white Liberal do. To my mind, conservatives should know better.

Things don’t look good if you follow the President too closely. He’s trained in tactics to dispirit the opposition.

The reality is that President Obinsky has made himself irrelevant by his populist demonizing. Let’s not do the same.

There is much good going on in America, e.g., the tea parties, the youth-filled pro-life movement, the desire for truth and certainty.

Let’s build on this and look for collaborators who are inclined by disposition, religion or culture to form coalition with conservatives. We’ve got to give people a reason to join us, not run away from us.

The Left is in panic mode. Their faith is in funding their cushy positions and imposing their wills on everyone through law. It is misplaced, and it has caused a backlash that terrifies it.

TV is dedicated to manipulating us into thinking darkly and into giving up.

Forgive the enthusiasm: screw them.

We’re going to rout this bunch if we stay positive and forge ahead.

We’re likely to trip ourselves up if we succumb to defeatism and to carping at people’s idiosyncrasies and personal attributes.

Re: Noman is willing to assume that the excerpts selected in Drudges synopsis so shear the flagrant money quotes from reasoned argument as to make them only seem the rantings of a disgruntled, xenophobic nativist.

I apologize for the tone, and edited it slightly so as to soften it on the blog. I didn’t want to mask my disagreement though.

“The disgruntled, xenophobic nativists ... oh yeah, you mean the people who were right about California? The people who warned that immigration would destroy California and make it impossible for conservatives to live there.”

Arthur Laffer has a lot to say about California’s demise in “The End of Prosperity” (2008), Ch. 8, Bankruptcy 90210: As Goes California, So Goes the Nation, pp. 152-179. He knows a lot about California being one of the architects of Prop 13 (Jarvis-Gann) and a long time Reagan advisor. He locates the blame for its plight in soak-the-rich policies that have driven business away, not with immigration.

I addressed it briefly in a review last year:

In a stinging critique of high-tax states, especially California, the authors note that current problems, which grow more acute by the day, stem from policy choices that have driven away the rich who are mostly the business owners that provide jobs and tax revenues.

The book is rich with statistics on in-migration and out-migration, which demonstrate once again, that people shape their behavior to incentives and disincentives. California, with the 7th largest economy in the world and all of the benefits that beautiful weather, topography and people can provide, has suffered from outmigration in recent years and teeters on the brink of collapse.

At the time of the books writing, the state was borrowing $30 billion per day to meet its obligations. The crisis began with the rise of a tax and regulatory culture in Sacramento that evinced hostility to high earners and businesses.

In 2007, California adopted carbon emission restrictions, pushed for a higher minimum wage, and was on the brink of installing a universal health care program with a pay or play provision. Businesses have chosen a third option in droves: leave and set up shop in another state. (Arthur Laffer was among them, choosing to relocate his business and employees to Tennessee.)

Yet, the state pushed ahead with lifetime welfare benefits (it does not comply with the federal welfare reform law requiring a five-year time limit on benefits), a steeply progressive income tax (10.3% on the states highest earners), and faces unfunded pension liabilities for public employees (CALPERS) of $26 billion, for teachers of $20 billion along with $48 billion in health benefits.

High wealth individuals have been leaving the state en masse.

President Obama has announced his intention to bail out the states, and in doing so will impose the cost of liberal utopian ideas onto citizens that reject them, including the very taxpayers that left states like California, New York, Illinois (in brief, the blue states) for in migration, red state havens.

Shame on him, his policies, and the economic insanity that has brought ruin to every people that has embraced it.

[end excerpt]

Laffer has something to say about immigration as well on pp. 286-288 (Return of the Nativists). In sum, he thinks we should find ways to allow immigrants who want to work in the US get green cards legally.

He’s worth reading even if one disagrees with him.

BTW, I was born and raised in San Francisco, and didn’t leave the state until 1988. I’ve been back annually to see family since then, but haven’t lived there. I wouldn’t move back without an extremely generous compensation package, and maybe not even then. The place is filled with, and run by, insane, suicidal, Statist Liberals.

I just finished reading it. He mentioned Free Republic in the book, regarding a thread where Hiroshima and Detroit were compared. Also one of the footnotes referenced a Free Republic thread about South Park.

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